"Glory Hallelujah- does enough ?" Topic

Hi
I have played a lot of different ACW rules from Fire and Fury , Guns at Gettysburg , They Couldnt Hit an Elephant etc.
We are about to try a return to Black Powder with the Glory Hallelujah supplement.
I always thought Black Powder was OK , but left me a bit deflated and didn't really hit the ACW spot with me.
The sudden 3 moves thing and so on…

I have just ordered Glory Hallelujah , my mate has it , so we are committed to giving it a go.

So those of you that have played them , how does it feel ?
Does to do enough to make it feel like a gritty ACW battle ?

Thanks

I have to admit I have the same concerns, having just finished reading my newly bought Glory Hallelujah

That being said I really like Black Powder, so we will be giving it a try soon – but we have a big Fire & Fury game first as part of our ACW campaign, so it will be a few weeks until I can intelligently comment

If you have a go before then would love to hear what you think

Do a search here for "Glory Hallelujah" and you will see some comments from others about it.

It is not as well done as Rebellion was. I was more frusterated by half the book being a history lesson. I was hoping for more scenarios. I thought the basic Black Powder rules covered the ACW just fine. I can understand special rules for a given scenario, bur this was not worth purchasing.

Matthew

Bought the book. Haven't tried the optional rules, though some look cool. My issue are the scenarios: most of them require a huge amount of figures. If you play 15mm then it's not an issue but if you play 28mm, then you'll need to fork out a ton of $. USD I have 13 CSA regiments and 14 Union infantry regiments with 3 batteries of artillery and 2 cavalry regiments each. And even with that, I can only play 1-2 scenarios properly. Maybe they should've included some generic scenarios like they do in Bolt Action.

Terrible. Don't waste your money.

Not a big fan of BP in general. Too many moving parts with all the special rules and so forth.

I love the rules. Played my first game not too long ago. Don't know about the optional ACW rules but I'm willing to give them a go. I'm looking forward to the unique units like the Iron Brigade. I'm just bummed they didn't include some more scenarios. Devoting a third of the book to a history lesson seemed a little excessive.

Not a big fan of BP in general. Too many moving parts with all the special rules and so forth.

Well perhaps, if you use a lot of the special rules in a single game. To my mind if you have more than half a dozen special rules in a game you are overthinking it.

Vanilla BP does the ACW quite well. You don't really need any of the special rules.

Don't really like BP but tried Glory Hallelujah and hoped it would give a better feel for the CW than others I've used.

As others have said there is too much history in it. I already know all that was wrote and MORE! There was nothing new and wasted space on …. nothing new.

The pics are superb as you would expect.

There isn't enough in this book to play Glory Hallelujah if you REALLY like the CW and wanted more 'feel' for the period. They needed a different author that could have taken BP and changed enough to make it fit the period. It left me wanted more and sad. I wasted my money. :(

Don

Fortunately I have the luxury of a huge 15mm ACW collection which is what I will be using

Our Tues night group has been playing ACW Black Powder and using some house rules for a few years to get that CW feel. We are playing with Glory Hallelujah for the first time tonight (13 Sept)We will be playing the Wilson Creek scenario supplied in the book. I was very surprised to find that many of the new specific ACW in the new book are similar to the house rules we have used for years. We play in 15mm and reduce all rages 1/3. I hope to share a mini AAR on TMP soon…
SFC Retired

Ok thanks SFC , looking forward to your thoughts.

We played the Aug 1861 Battle for Wilson Creek, scenario last night using "GH." All went well with the new rules. We played with 15mm figs so all ranges are cut 1/4.

The rule of no free charge when in "Initiative" range is a BIG change. Three charges were ordered within the initiative range. Two failed & one went in. All three charges ordered outside of the Initiative range went in. This rule makes you think real hard about making a charge as you to not want to risk a failed command roll?

The pass through or "interpenetration" is also a BIG change…while most of the units passed through did fine with no effects. BUT…I had a BDE or 4 Regt's all within 8" (initiative move) the lead Regt was shaken. The three trailing Regt all rolled 1s or a 2 and failed to pass through & had to stayed in place…as a last resort I tried to move the shaken unit back behind and it rolled a 1! The whole BDE remained in place and did not move! The Rebels had two failed interpenetration too.

The one rule that was the hardest to get used to was the "WHIPPED Unit" rule…in past a routed unit was removed from the battle. In "GH" it becomes Whipped…and must move away and attempt to get 8" away from the enemy an or stop at a defensible position (Wall,trench etc…) We made a house rule the the top of the BIG hill was a defensible position. So my Yank BDE which had 3 Whipped units and was broken fought a very tough withdrawal towards the hill top with rebels in contact for three turns.

We also have a house rule for all BP games that a Div or Corps/Army CMDR (if there is one) can attempt to rally a Broken BDE. He himself must try to rally a shaken unit in the broken BDE. He must also be within command range (8") to do this and can not have given any other order that turn, and after the Broken BDE has made its mandatory move away from the enemy. If the number shaken unit drops low enough the BDE will become UN-Broken and resume combat effectiveness. BG Lyons tried to rally a Broken BDE twice and failed! So much of the Yankee hero "Lion of West!" LOLOLOL

We played 8 of 10 turns in 2.45 hrs (We have a3 hour limit on our Tues night games) In the end the Rebels won a Minor Victory as one Union BDE was broken and were falling back to the big hill (Where BG Lyons was killed in the real 1861 fight)a 2nd Yankee BDE was very close to breaking. The Rebels did rally one broken BDE. One Rebel General was killed leading a charge while one BDE Commander was relived of command and sent back home after rolling all those "1" and failing to pass through each other!

We enjoyed the "GH" game and new rules… the toughest rule to get used was the "Whipped" rule. As this was early war (Aug 1861) we did not have any special new rules like "rebel Yell", Uppity, and seen the elephant" those will come in a few weeks.

SFC Retired

I ditched BP after 1 ACW game, I really don't like the chaotic movement 0-3 moves, really?
I always ask myself, does a set of rules produce a realistic looking battle, and a realistic sort of result.
For me personally, BP and most card driven activation games seem lacking in one or both departments.
I accept they are popular though, so don't be offended if you like them!

Based on my limited experience with BP, the changes mentioned by "SFC Retired" sound pretty good. However, like "herkybird" I was never able to accept the command system. I've always thought that if you yanked the command system out of out BP you would have a pretty serviceable generic set of rules, but mentioning that to the local BP people seemed to be like suggesting the removal of a vital organ. :)

I've always found Black Powder gives exciting games.
But they bear very little relationship to actual battles, and often leave me feeling unsatisfied. It often feels like players are 'playing the system' rather than playing the period.
So kind of depends what you want out of your wargames.
If you want a fun exciting game based on history with lots of figures on the table, then BP is great. If you want a bit more historical meat, then no so much.

We find that the "command" roll to get 1-3 moves actually adds a fog of war. You have to state how many moves you are rolling for…in realty we seem to roll for "no" moves due to a failed command roll more than anything else. The fog of war comes from when your BDE become separated and unable to support each other.You also learn to rely on your initiative moves and "free" moves ie: if in "column formation" and you fail a command roll you still get one action. BP is not for everyone and like all games has its faults and things we do not like…but it is very fast play and quick to learn which suits our clubs need for our weekly Tuesday night 3 hour game.

SFC Retired

Thanks SFC , so you played the scenario out of the book on a 6x4 table in 15mm ?
When I have played BP in 15mm (Napoleonics mainly) we use a 50% reduced reference sheet and it works out OK on a 6x4 table.

When the scenario says 4 guns , is that two actual gun model s, or do you deploy 4 actual gun models ? I'm not sure of the scale ?

My 15mm ACW figs are based on the old Johnny Reb system… I use one gun on a stand. The number guns in the battery is equal to the total number of gunner figures.

SFC Retired

Ok thanks.
I see the rules have 6 guns batteries as well.
I think I'll use 2 gun models to represent 4 Gun Batteries and 3 guns to represent 6 gun batteries.

Yes Keith. I think that's the intention. One thing that stopped me using BP for ACW was the difficulty of allowing for variable battery sizes in the vanilla rules. GH provided a simple fix for that so now I'm trialling it.